Arena Design: "Vacuum" - Part 2

Now that you have "shadow floating" in your skills set and the concept of keeping random guests out of the center, let's take a look at how you would enter your duelists:

The miniature "stable" that I set up on the edge of my Celestial Observatory is reserved mainly for team PVP.  There were countless cases when set teams had to restart the Joining Process over and over, simply because eight minds were thinking in different directions, or there were connectivity problems.

If you haven't figured it out yet, you can control the order that teams and players are set up in PVP within a house.  Players from opposing teams must join in alternating fashion.

For example, let's say Team A is composed of Adam, Ben, Carrie, and Denise, and Team B is composed of Eugene, Frank, Gertrude, and Henry.  Team A wants to have Denise go first, followed by Ben, then Adam, and finally Carrie, and Team B wants Gertrude to lead, with Eugene, Henry, and Frank following, in that order.  Thus, for visual simplicity: Team A wants the order of DBAC, and Team B wants the order GEHF.

Since the game will automatically decide on a random turn order for each team, it doesn't matter which team enters first.  But, in the process that follows, it does!  Let's say that Team B decides to enter first; Gertrude would enter the ring to start the countdown.  Since both teams must join in alternating fashion, that means Denise will be the second player to enter.  Now each side of the battle circle has an opposing team member, and you technically have a 1v1 going on.  Thus, Eugene will be the next to enter, followed by Ben, then Henry, then Adam, then Frank, and finally Carrie.  The total join order is G, D, E, B, H, A, F, C.

It sounds elementary, but with a little miscommunication, mistakes can happen...sometimes again, and again, and again.  I remember when the Massive Fantasy Palace came out that it took about 6 or 7 tries in one PVP party until we could finally settle with a Fixed Teams match.  And still, today, it tends to happen, no matter how familiar the players are with the process!

Thus, the little "stable" thing I created is an attempt at "fool-proofing" the initialization of a PVP match.  Let's re-use Team A and Team B in this explanation, but with Team A's lead player (Denise) entering first!

Here's a top-down view of the setup:

Denise and Gertrude would enter the first lane, with a crate separating them from each other.  Ben and Eugene will take the second lane, Adam and Henry in the third, and Carrie and Frank in the fourth.  Since Team A is going first, Denise, Ben, Adam, and Carrie would occupy the space that's closest to the teleporters (and facing them), while Team B would be facing the crates.  So, imagine the top row of players in the picture are labeled D, B, A, and C, and the bottom row are labeled G, E, H, and F, respectively.

When the match is about to begin, all players would AUTORUN forward.  Team A should be running into the edge of the Celestial Observatory, while Team B should be running against the crates.  The host would then click on the Small Purple Rug (which has the Long Blue Runner "bridge" attached) and place the small rug down behind D.  Because there is now a "tangible" area in front of Denise (instead of the boundary of the CL Obs), she will advance forward and into the teleporters.  The crate in the first lane is then removed, allowing Gertrude to follow in the same manner.  The bridge is then moved to the next lane, where it "shoots" Ben towards the teleporters.  The second lane crate is removed, allowing Eugene to follow, and so on.

It sounds a little complex and tedious in writing, but it's a pretty simple (and inexpensive) procedure in the long run.  Maybe we'll have to have some PvP parties to show it in action, sometime!

(This set up is appropriately called "Vacuum" since players enact a "force of gravitational pull" by Autorunning towards the orange "black holes," which spits them into "another universe" where the victims must do battle to return home.)